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NOVEMBER BI-WEEKLY Part 2 - RESULTS!

Welcome to the second TTB challenge of this month!

Christmas is approaching the magical world, and most of its witches and wizards are busy preparing for the yule season, buying presents and planning quality time with the family, except for a few. "How blasphemous!" you gasp, but maybe they have good reasons for being utter party-pooping prats. You are going to give them these reasons.

In this challenge, you will write about a canon character and his/her decision to not celebrate Christmas. However, you're not allowed to pick anybody from the following list:

Also, a potion has to feature in your drabble. How big a role this potion plays is up to you, but it has to be from canon, not one concocted in the dungeons of your brain. I'll be referring to HP Wikia's "List of Potions" entry; using that could be your safest bet.

So, the salient points of the challenge are:

+ Choose a canon character - major/no matter how minor - except anyone in the list given above. (They may be included in the form of secondary characters.)
+ Make him/her decide not to celebrate Christmas.
+ Use a potion from canon in your drabble.
+ Your drabble should have a word count between 300-500 words.
+ Follow MNFF guidelines. Make sure that all SPaG and formatting issues have been resolved before you submit your drabble(s). Or before I read them.
+ The challenge closes midnight GMT, November 30th. Get your entry in before then.

Yeah, but what do I get? Points, of course, and a chance to swagger around the boards and increase the pride and glory of your House. The distribution of points is as follows:

+ 5 points per entrant
+ 15 points for nabbing the Top Spot
+ 10 for nabbing I'll Get You Next Time
+ 5 for nabbing I'll Also Get You and You Next Time

The Barmaids reserve the right to award participants as per the quality and quantity of the entries. We haven't Cake-Womaned anybody yet, apparently, but that's no guarantee it's not going to happen: Good Lord!

EADA Benjamin Stone's office (having somehow jumped back to the early 90s)

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709

Name: Wish I had a cool nickname for Nagini Riddle...House: the Weasley one *chuckles*Title: The Snow Globe (That Started it All)Ratings/Warnings: 3rd-5th yrs; Suicide, Mental Disorders, HeartbreakWord Count: 440A/N: For Jess, because she inspired me to write a Draco/Katie.

The tiny village suspended in the clear liquid was silently dusted with fake snow. She stared at it with haunted eyes, yearning, dreaming, for what could have been. Trembling, her hand reached out to the base of the globe and turned the little key. Music suddenly filled the air, its tones slow and mournful.

With great pains, she shoved the snow globe away from her, an intense cold dousing her heart. She let herself sit there, on her wooden chair, eyes glassed over.

A chime brought her out of her reverie and she glanced at it to see it was almost midnight. Christmas would soon be here.

But if one looked at her house, he/she would not have known the holidays were mere hours away. Her rooms were bleak, somewhat empty, and lacking festive cheer. The only sign of Christmas was the snow globe. And it had taken her great pains to even leave it out after she'd decided to skirt the holiday.

The decision had come at the beginning of December, after all the decorations had been put up. She'd been determined to continue on as though life was normal - but as she was putting up the very last of the ornaments, she'd happened upon the globe.

Seeing it after his demise caused her heart to fail. He had given it to her their first Christmas together, and though it was a Muggle toy, something about it reminded her of him. Succumbed by her regrets and memories, all the decorations came down, with great haste. She couldn't live normally. Not after -

She couldn't bring herself to think about it. It was too much to bear. Her hands automatically covered her face as thick streams of tears poured down her cheeks. How could he? How - how -

How dare he! In frustration, she kicked the chair. After all they had gone through, how could he decide to leave her?

Heart pounding, she quickly made her way to the kitchen. For the umpteenth time, she saw the vial he had left behind. The poison that had taken his life - a Draught of Living Death. She struggled to keep her face calm, but the anguish overpowered her will.

"Draco!" she cried, and collapsed to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. Why? Why had he done it?

A sudden desire consumed her, and she glanced to the vial again. How simple it would be - just a sip. She, Katie, could avoid all the festive cheer with a simple drink. The idea flooded her entire being. Just a sip. Just a sip.

It wasn't proper to hate one's father, Hannah knew, but he was making it so easy.

It wasn't fair. She needed him. He had no right to shut himself away like this. She found herself thinking all sorts of traitorous thoughts: he had lost his wife, but she had lost her mother. It wasn't as though she could get another one of those. And with her mother's death she'd lost a significant link with the magical world; her father had been accepting and involved with her and her mother's lives, but he'd never really understood.

He certainly understood Dreamless Sleep Potions well enough, though. Hannah felt anger curl sourly in her stomach at the thought. Her uncle had meant well when he'd started bringing them, but things were getting absolutely out of hand, and no one would listen to her when she begged them to stop giving her father the tiny cobalt vials. She almost wished he was a drunkard instead; at least then she could be angry at him without feeling guilty over it.

He wouldn't wake until well after noon. Hannah did not know why she was awake so early, except that she couldn't quiet her mind enough to fall back to sleep. The grey edges of morning only made the naked branches of the trees outside more forlorn, and even the neighbour's fairy lights could not banish that clinging feeling of hopelessness that seemed to have gripped every morning since her mother had died.

She knew she should be trying to wake her father up, getting him presentable, going through the motions of looking forward to the Christmas dinner that her uncle hosted every year. But somehow, with her mother gone, Hannah couldn't shake the feeling that she and her father no longer belonged at that gathering. Her connection to that side of the family had been severed, and the thought of seeing them all giving her those pitying looks was like salt in a gaping wound.

No, they'd stay home today. They'd ignore the fairy lights and the smell of evergreen boughs on the air. Her father probably didn't know what day it was, so he wouldn't even realise anything was amiss. Maybe some other year, when the pain wasn't so fresh, they'd be able to decorate a tree and exchange brightly-wrapped parcels and light a candle for her mother to celebrate her favourite holiday.

This year, though, the world was grey and swirled around the enormous hole that had been left in their lives, and neither she nor her father could escape that yawning empty void they carried within their hearts.

Severus grimaced slightly as he placed the mistletoe berries into the mortar. He’d often wondered if the addition of mistletoe to the Forgetfulness Potion was a Christmas-driven discovery. Severus firmly ground the berries; he had once read about how the juice could be used to trap birds and small animals. He also remembered trying it. He’d never done it in front of Lily; he instinctively knew that she would have been disgusted if she’d learned about that particular pastime. A tiny smile flickered across his features as he recalled how her face had lit up when he had shown her the tiny robin in his cupped hands. He usually tested his potions on the animals he captured, but the robin’s bright plumage had reminded him of Lily and he had spared it.

Severus examined the contents of his mortar and deemed them adequate to add to his cauldron. He normally found it easier to concentrate on his potions, but this was something even a first year could handle. Severus enjoyed the opportunity to set all other thoughts aside in order to focus on every detail of his potion. At one time he’d used such moments to ignore his parents’ latest row or a new humiliation carried out by Potter and Black, but as a teenager his troubles had taken a new turn. Unbidden, one such memory crept back. He and Lily had been only thirteen. They had been at one of Slughorn’s parties and found themselves under some mistletoe. When he had awkwardly pointed it out to her, Lily had blushed deeply, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and mumbled something about whether he’d like to go shopping over the break for potion supplies. A few years later she was kissing James Potter under the mistletoe of Slughorn’s annual event. More memories started to flood his mind, but Severus’s potion was complete.

He poured out a small phial, just enough to numb the pain for a few days, just enough so that he could survive one more Christmas without Lily. As he raised the phial to his lips, another memory visited him.

He had been invited over to the Evans’s for a Christmas party. He’d felt even more out of place than usual, but refused to pass up an evening with Lily. The two had spent most of the night spying on Petunia and her very Muggle boyfriend, snogging under a sprig of mistletoe. He could still remember Lily wrinkling her nose in disgust, while trying not to giggle. She’d then turned to him and stared straight into his eyes with her brilliant green ones. “Thanks for coming, Sev. Tonight would have been unbearable without you.”

Pulling himself back to the present, Severus stared at the dose of Forgetfulness Potion. He swallowed back a lump in his throat and Vanished the potion. His memories were all he had left of her, and a Christmas entirely without Lily would be truly unbearable.

Name: eternalangelHouse:RavenclawTitle: The GiftRatings/Warnings: 3rd-5th year noneWord Count: 499A/N: Hopefully I captured my main character well enough.

Merope Gaunt wrapped a shawl tightly around herself, and threw a piece of wood into the dying fire. She huddled close to its warmth as the winter wind howled around the ramshackle house, and unbearable cold seeped through the cracks in the walls. Marvolo and Morphin were mercifully asleep.

It was Christmas, but Merope had nothing to be cheery about. Her father and brother could care less about the holiday. She had spent most of her day cleaning the house, and collecting fire wood. All of this was in the norm for Merope, but the holiday only reminded her of how dismal her life really was.

And it was made worse because she had seen him again today. Tom Riddle had been stunning in his black tailored suit, his smile as beautiful as ever. Merope had been on the side of the wintry road when the Riddle coach had passed. Her heart had soared when she saw his perfectly sculpted face peering out the window, but then she saw the pretty little blonde woman on his arm, and her heart plummeted. It had been only a split second, but it was a enough to make Merope spiral into gloom. She imagined what it would be like to be in that coach, her arm draped across his. The more she held the image in her head, the more her gloom deepened, and she went back to her broken home more miserable than ever. She had decided right then she would not celebrate such a lonely holiday.

At that point, Merope threw herself into cleaning. It was during this furious scouring of the house that she came across an old book and a dusty vial. She recognized her mother’s scrawl on the cover and on the vial. Merope peeked inside the book, and found that it was her mother’s grimoire. Her father had tossed it into a rubbish pile when her mother died, never thinking that Merope could use it.

Now, as Merope sat near the fire, she pulled out her mother’s grimoire. The pages were old and dusty, but she lovingly leafed through it. She could barely remember her mother, but she knew that if she had lived, Merope’s life would have been different.

Merope caressed the vial she had secreted away in her dress pocket as she looked over its recipe in the grimoire; it was a love potion to be exact. She didn’t know if the vial was still usable, but she found she didn’t really care. It had been her mothers, and she felt as if it were a gift from beyond the grave from her. For this vial and this book were going to make Merope’s dreams come true.

Merope made up her mind. Come summer, she would master the love potion in the book using her mother‘s own vial as an example no matter what it took. Come summer, she would be the one on Tom Riddle‘s arm. Slowly, a smile crept across her face.

Banner of one of my favorite characters. Icon is a quote from Battlestar Galactica. Banner and icon by me.

This is surprisingly mega-prompt of me (shockingly prompt ... I better get a move on) Before I announce the results, here's food for thought: It pays to get your entries beta-read and/or swept of errors. I appreciate a good story; I like good characterisation; I'm a fan of gripping prose. I cannot, however, ignore SPaG, especially when it's a competition. A quality entry is one that must have all of these, and it's a quality entry that will win.